Digital Ecologies III: Machine / Material / Land
Date: July 24-25 2025
Location: Bath, UK
Venue: Bath Spa University, Locksbrook Campus
Organised by Material : Art and Technology Research Group (Sam Wilkins, Claire Loder, Dave Webb and Charlie Tweed)
Digital Ecologies III is a two-day symposium which examines the complex material relationships between technology, society, food and energy production and the land. It is informed by Yuk Hui’s notion that the essence of contemporary technology is to ‘consider everything as a standing reserve, as a resource to be ordered and exploited’ (Hui, 2021). Along these lines Hito Steyerl identifies AI generative media as ‘Mean Images’ and looks at their reliance on ‘vast infrastructures of polluting hardware and menial and disenfranchised labour’ (Steyerl, 2023).
The digital age has become our modern-day philosopher’s stone; with its infrastructure exploiting both base and precious materials. Whilst our technologies hold the potential to transform our world in ways we are only beginning to understand, we must approach this potential with a deep understanding of the material and spiritual consequences for the human and non-human world. We must scrutinise the ecological cost of production, extraction, AI and technological acts, and seek to reimagine our relationship with technology, not as a tool for exploitation, but as a means of seeing things differently and fostering care and attention towards all entities.
Our symposium is organised around three main themes:
Machine Futures (Charlie Tweed)
In this strand we explore how we can challenge Hui’s notion of contemporary technology as a tool for extraction and exploitation of resources. We ask how technology and our relationship with machines of all sorts can be re-imagined in creative, critical and sustainable ways. Here we would like to expand on Hui ‘s other ideas which consider how philosophy and art can transform the concept of technology, including the imagination, invention and use of technology’ away from the conditions of exploitation.
We are interested in a range of responses that explore themes including:
Speculative machine futures and imaginaries – re-imagined ethical and sustainable machines
Machines that help us to communicate with, & understand non-human intelligences
Non-western and postcolonial machine futurisms
Organic and biological machines
Caring machines
Soil as place, internet as place-less-ness (Claire Loder and Dave Webb)
This strand thinks about digital technologies and their entanglements with soil and food systems. Vandana Shiva argues that the techno optimism advanced by Big Tech and Big Ag, will only exacerbate the climate emergency. How might thinking-with soil, an undertheorized body, offer fresh perspectives?
Soil, when understood as biologically intact, interconnected and ongoing, is contingent on place. Conversely, cloud technologies and internet infrastructure have a place-less-ness - our everyday actions online, both trivial and essential, feel immaterial and weightless thanks to metaphors and abstractions like the cloud. These tools are constructed and operational through complex relationships with soil and land.
What sense does soil make of our digital actions, what seeps in and out of soily bodies – materially, conceptually, philosophically?
How might we create new metaphors for the digital that materialise and bring to mind these hidden realities, manifesting with mass, visibility, and place in a more authentic digital ecology?
We are interested in a range of responses that explore themes including:
Soil-human relations
Soil-food-data synergies
Food culture
Extraction
Data and transfer
New metaphors and stories for digital infrastructure and digital actions
(Digital) compost and a (digital) lifecycle
Temporality
Acoustic soilscapes
Belowground digital ecologies
Photosynthesis and carbon
Phenology
Soil care practices and rituals
Landscape, Ritual & Technology (Sam Wilkins)
This strand seeks to understand how technology has altered human interaction with the landscape and our ritualistic practices. We welcome papers that explore how we are adapting to change and uncertainty through ritualistic and folk behaviours in the face of the current climate crisis.
The question arises: How has technology altered our interaction with the landscape and our ritualistic practices? Furthermore, in what novel or traditional manners are we exploring, celebrating, and adapting to change and uncertainty?
We are interested in a range of responses from artists, academics, historians and technologists who are investigating the intersections of landscape and technology through ritual, folklore or performance to submit papers and present work that explore the following themes:
Ritual & Rites
Embodied practices
Energy Production: Solar, Wind, Hydro
Alchemy
Technology as revered object
Festival/Carnival/Rave/Music/Dance/Theatre
Folk Practices and Costumes
Uncertainty
Celebration / Feasting
Human / more-than-human
Calendrical: Seasons / Harvest / Spring / May Day
Submission Process
We welcome submissions from academics, artists, researchers, and practitioners who are exploring these themes. We also welcome proposals for non-traditional approaches to papers including proposals for exhibits and moving image screenings, sound works & performances.
Abstracts must be submitted in English by February 20th 2025 to artandtechnologyresearch@bathspa.ac.uk with the subject “Abstract DE3 2025” and should not exceed 300 words. Abstracts must include the presentation title & the author's name. For practice based work please provide the title and a summary/description of the work including duration for sound/video works.
Shortly after the conference, participants will be invited to submit their work for an online publication.
Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their submission by April 28th 2025. Subsequent information regarding the registration process and process for submitting work will be made available closer to the symposium date.